Friday, 19 September 2008

I need advil

I work on Buchanan Street, the major pedestrianized shopping street in Glasgow. See the underground station? My office is to the left. Fab location to work...lots of choices for lunch, short walk to my beautician, great shopping, easy/quick bus journey home and back. Oh except for the buskers.

Buskers you say? What's wrong with someone making a little money by playing some music. Nothing is wrong intrinsically, in fact I far prefer busking to begging, but I live in Glasgow. Glasgow is in Scotland. Yes Ryan we know this you say. So think about it, what kind of buskers do tourists want to see? Pipers.

Nothing against bagpipes...I can handle small doses as long as I'm not in an enclosed space. But when it's for an extended period of time, it is more annoying that the Native American (but suspiciously Latin American looking) pan flute band that used to play Beatles covers at the Foggy Bottom metro stop outside my dorm window.

Now there is a new hybrid of the piping busker, who wants to stand out from the crowd. It's pipes and drums, not in the traditional sense, but with African drums. Sometimes it's actual African men with tombolas and a piper or like today it was a band called Clanadonia.

I'm sure despite their scruffy, braveheart-esque (ooh tourists love it) appearance and head-throbbing beats that they are nice people, but today I have a headache and did not enjoy their little show.

This isn't from today, but you get the gist of what was outside my window.